Privacy & Safety

Designed with FERPA/COPPA-style protections in mind.

• What we collect

  A display name (not necessarily a real name), grade/class and challenge photos. No location tracking, no advertising identifiers, no third-party data sharing.

• Who can see what

  Individual rankings are visible only inside a classroom group. The public leaderboard ranks schools, never students. There are no public, searchable profiles.

• Consent

  Students join through a teacher-created class code. Accounts activate once a district-wide agreement or an individual parent/guardian consent is on file, depending on the student's age.

• Photo guidelines

  Photograph the action, not the person — the bag, the bike, the bottle, the seedling. No faces, names, school crests or house numbers in the frame. Only upload photos you took yourself.

• AI review

  PlantMax's reviewer only looks at what the photo is of — litter, bikes, bottles, plants. It never identifies or analyses people, and it never rejects on its own: unclear photos go to your teacher.

• Content safety filter

  Every photo and every piece of typed text is screened for nudity, violence, weapons, drugs, hate symbols and bullying before anyone sees it. Blocked items are never stored, shown or scored — and there's no point penalty for trying again.

• Wellbeing escalation

  If something suggests a student may be at risk, it goes straight to the teacher and school admin as a wellbeing follow-up rather than being silently deleted.

• Deletion

  Leaving a class or graduating removes the account, its photos and its points. Teachers and school admins can trigger deletion at any time.